Bilinguals display word use patterns in each of their languages that diverge from those of monolinguals. One explanation is that, for bilinguals, the word meanings of one language are affected by those of the other. Another is that the cross-language impact lies in on-line processes – word retrieval probabilities or word form activation levels. To distinguish between interpretations, this study asked Mandarin–English bilinguals to name household objects in their L1 and L2 via forced choice instead of free production. The options given were the monolingual-preferred choices, removing memory retrieval demands and keeping those words at a high activation level. For comparison, monolinguals of each language carried out the same task in their native language. Differences from monolinguals in word choice were considerably decreased, particularly in L1, but bilingual patterns still displayed some cross-language impact in both L1 and L2. This outcome involves cross-language impacts on both bilingual processing and meaning representations.